When, therefore, in 1878, by a curious coincidence, two attempts were made upon the life of Emperor William I (one by Hödel, an irresponsible person of diseased mind and body, who had been dismissed from the Social Democratic party; and another by Nobiling, who was not a Social Democrat), Bismarck immediately and easily seized this occasion to crush Social Democracy and increase the imperial power. He dissolved the Reichstag, and in one month the law-courts inflicted no less than five hundred years of imprisonment for lèse-majesté. Within eight months the authorities dissolved two hundred and twenty-two workingmen’s unions, suppressed one hundred and twenty-seven periodical and two hundred and seventy-eight other publications, and innumerable bona-fide co-operative societies were compelled by the police to close their doors without trial and with no possibility of appeal. With equal despatch numerous Social Democrats were expelled from Germany on a few days’ notice. This traditional attitude toward the Social Democrat, who from our standpoint is the German radical and liberal, appears again in the present Emperor when he declares (May 14, 1889) that every Social Democrat is synonymous with enemy of the country. How Social Democracy has grown in spite of the Emperor’s attempt to check it will be evident from a consideration of the following figures, in which the forty political parties are grouped into their four larger divisions:
| 1871 | 1881 | 1893 | 1907 | 1912 | |
| Right, or Conservative | 895,000 | 1,210,000 | 1,806,000 | 2,151,000 | 1,149,916 |
| Liberal | 1,884,000 | 1,948,000 | 2,102,000 | 3,078,000 | 3,227,846 |
| Clerical | 973,000 | 1,618,000 | 1,920,000 | 2,779,000 | 2,012,990 |
| Social Democrats | 124,000 | 312,000 | 1,787,000 | 3,259,000 | 4,238,919 |
In spite of this representation in the Reichstag, the power of the German political parties is slight. The power lies far more with the Emperor and the Bundesrat. According to Article II of the Constitution, the Emperor represents the empire internationally and can declare war if defensive (in German eyes the present is a defensive war), can make peace as well as enter into treaties with other nations, and appoint and receive ambassadors. When treaties are related to matters regulated by imperial legislation, and when war is not merely defensive, the Emperor must have the consent of the Bundesrat, in which, together with the Reichstag, are vested the legislative functions of the empire. But de facto, and through her power of veto, Prussia controls the Bundesrat, and as King of Prussia the Emperor controls Prussia.
That, even so, the Constitution is not the real and final source of political power, but a convenient political instrument, which in the mind of so great an authority as Bismarck might still easily be changed without consulting the people, we may gather from the fact that the Great Chancellor frequently debated the question of limiting the suffrage. “The blind Hödhur[1] [the German elector] does not know how to manipulate in his coarse hands the Nuremberg toy [the Reichstag] which I gave him, and through his voting he is ruining the Fatherland.” According to Hohenlohe, Bismarck considered setting aside the Reichstag and returning to the old Bundestag.
[1] In Norse mythology Hödhur was the powerful blind god who slew Balder.
The late Price Collier, an enthusiastic admirer of Germany, is therefore quite justified in saying: “This Reichstag is really only nominally a portion of the governing body. It has the right to refuse a bill presented by the government, but if it does so it may be summarily dismissed, as has happened several times, and another election usually provides a more amenable body.” And if the following judgment seems somewhat downright, it is none the less substantially true:
“The fact that the members of the Reichstag are not in the saddle but are used unwillingly and often contemptuously as a necessary and often stubborn and unruly pack-animal by the Kaiser-appointed ministers, the fact that they are pricked forward or induced to move by a tempting feed held just beyond the nose has something to do, no doubt, with the lack of unanimity which exists. The diverse elements debate with one another and waste their energy in rebukes and recriminations which lead nowhere and result in nothing. I have listened to many debates in the Reichstag where the one aim of the speeches seemed to be merely to unburden the soul of the speaker. He had no plan, no proposal, no solution, merely a confession to make. After forty-odd years the Germans, in many ways the most cultivated nation in the world, are still without real representative government.”
History, to be sure, may be read in many ways, but from one standpoint it is perfectly possible to regard the framing of the present Constitution and the building up of the present German Empire not as the last stage in the attempt to give freedom and self-government to the German people, but to guarantee and maintain the supremacy of Prussia. Whether or not this is a possible view, it is, in any case, one occasionally to be found implied in the speeches of the Emperor, and it came to open expression in the statement of William I that the empire was merely a “greater Prussia.” So, too, when a few years ago Alsace-Lorraine proved itself recalcitrant to the wishes of its imperial master, he threatened that he would make of it a “Prussian province.”[2]
[2] On this occasion a Socialist orator declared in the Reichstag: “We salute the imperial words as the confession, full of weight and coming from a competent source, that annexation to Prussia is the heaviest punishment that one can threaten to impose upon a people for its resistance against Germany. It is a punishment like hard labor in the penitentiary, with loss of civil rights.”
It need, therefore, not appear as startling as would otherwise be the case if on occasions which to us would seem peculiarly appropriate (as, for instance, the famous Königsberg speech, August 25, 1910) the Emperor makes no mention whatever of the Constitution. The sources of his power and the sanction for his authority he finds not in this instrument but in the history of his ancestors.